Bestselling author Peter Hessler became an authority on modern China with his books River Town (2001) and Oracle Bones (2006). In his new book Country Driving he goes on a 7,000-mile road trip in search of China.

For expats who have only lived in Beijing or in Shanghai, what kinds of experiences, moods or insights do they miss having not lived in small towns like Fuling, Sancha, or Lishui that you write about?

China is a big country and you’re never going to get it all; there’s always some limit to a person’s experience. I came to enjoy provincial towns, and I sensed they are important; as a writer I wanted to capture the sense of rapid urbanization, of people moving between country and city. It’s easier to grasp these issues in a smaller city. That’s one reason why my new book has long sections about Sancha, a village north of Beijing, and Lishui, a small factory town in Zhejiang. But in cities like Beijing and Shanghai you get a sharper perspective on other aspects of Chinese life.

James Fallows posed a fascinating question in the title essay in his book Postcards from Tomorrow Square: “Holland has a culture, but it does not have a dream. There is no Canadian dream, or Finnish dream... The two countries whose cultures can plausibly support the idea of a dream these days are the United States and China... But what exactly will the Chinese dream mean?” In your opinion, what is the Chinese dream?

The things that Chinese people want are not so different from what people in the United States want. At this stage, the dream has a lot to do with material improvement, as well as the freedom to make their own decisions about where to live and work. I think that in the coming years we’ll see some change, in the sense that the Chinese people will gain more of an interest in the emotional and spiritual sides of life.

How has living in China shaped your view of the world, of America, of yourself?

It certainly changed my personality. Fuling could be a difficult place to live in the mid-1990s; there weren’t many foreigners and the attention could be overwhelming. It taught me to be more patient and more even-tempered. It’s probably good for anybody to have the experience of living in a place where he or she looks different.

I suppose I’ve become disengaged from national identities, at least in the emotional sense. These connections don’t mean so much to me anymore, and I don’t get personally frustrated by policies in places like China or the United States. I’m interested in the cultures and the people, but neither country explains fully who I am. My only real personal commitment is to individualism.

I was always inclined to be that way, but living in Fuling as an outsider solidified the instinct. By the time I left Fuling, I wasn’t inclined to have a love-hate relationship with China. The country seems too big and complex to develop such simple emotional responses. Within China there are people and places that I care about deeply, and that’s where I feel a strong emotional connection. It’s the same with America.

Westerners are often nostalgic for Old Shanghai, why? Can it be found here still?

The sense of Chinese history can be disorienting for foreigners, because in the West we tend to associate the past with structures – old neighborhoods, buildings, monuments. But China doesn’t offer much of this. The Chinese sense of history is quite different; it has more to do with the imagination and the written text than it does with buildings. In the 1930s and 1940s, when the architect Liang Sicheng travelled northern China in search of intact ancient structures, he observed that locals didn’t care much about them. They tended to emphasize old tablets or writings. Liang commented, “They were interested in calligraphy . . . , impressed by the written word, not the carpenter’s handiwork.”

So this might be one reason foreigners like the old parts of Shanghai. And of course neighborhoods like the French Concession are very pleasant, with lots of trees and nice buildings. I suppose there’s also some nostalgia for the time when foreigners ran the show.

Whom do you hope to influence with your writing?

There’s a younger generation that is starting language study earlier, and coming to China at a younger age. These people are going to have a really unique perspective on the country, and I have great hopes for that generation. I think they can help us have a much better understanding of China than in the past. So I’m always happy if I hear that a young person likes what I’ve written.

Many readers in Shanghai are saddened that your wife Leslie Chang won’t be joining you at the festival. You are both journalists who write about China. What’s your writing relationship like?

It’s uncomplicated. Leslie and I have written about similar topics, but there’s never been a competitive element, probably because we always got along very well and had great respect for each other’s work. And I think both of us see writing as personal and individualistic; each of us is more interested in the process than in the public reception. It focuses your attention on the things that matter. We do help each other, especially when it comes to research, in terms of giving advice and thinking of strategies for reporting. And we’ve edited each other’s books and stories. But in the end each of us writes alone.

I guess the short way of saying all of this is that you marry somebody not because she’ll make you a better writer, but because she’ll enrich your life.

What are you currently working on?

I’m working on some magazine stories in southwestern Colorado, where I live. I’m planning to shift away from Chinese subjects for a while.

By Jean Yung

Catch Peter Hessler at The Glamour Bar on Sunday, March 21 at 5pm. RMB65 includes a drink